We propose an econometric model to decompose corporate bond spreads into compensation required by investors for unpredictable future changes in the credit environment and for expected default losses. We use the model to understand whether the significant reduction in corporate bond spreads...

This essay seeks to rehabilitate the capital asset pricing model by splitting beta, the basic unit of systematic risk, into subatomic (or “baryonic”) components. By analogy to quantum chromodynamics and other aspects of the Standard Model of particle physics, this essay bifurcates beta on...

This study explores whether conditional correlations between precious metals and stock markets impact upon expected returns on precious metals. The empirical evidence presents that there is no significant trade–off between conditional correlations and expected returns. This study reveals that...

Robert C. Merton is the School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the John and Natty McArthur University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. Merton received the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1997 for a new...

Purpose: Global merger and acquisition and capital market activity have increased over the last decade. A key determinant of the value of these transactions are the results of corporate valuations, which require technical expertise as well as professional judgement. The purpose of this research...

We show that constraints on using leverage for foreign positions can act as an international investment barrier. Guided by an international CAPM with leverage constraints, we use observed stock prices to measure the variation in the magnitude and the implicit cost of such cross-border funding...

We show that global political uncertainty, measured by the U.S. election cycle, on average, leads to a fall in equity returns in fifty non-U.S. countries. At the same time, market volatilities rise, local currencies depreciate, and sovereign bond returns increase. The effect of global political...

The underlying stochastic processes that drive returns in several emerging bond and stock markets are investigated using the pure diffusion, the jump diffusion, the ARCH pure diffusion, and the ARCH jump diffusion models. The results indicate that jump diffusion models fit the data better than...

We provide a comprehensive analysis of the impact of economic and financial globalization on asset return comovements over the past 35 years. Our globalization indicators draw a distinction between de jure openness that results from changes in the regulatory environment and de facto or realized...

We examine the relationship between stock extreme illiquidity and the implied cost of capital for firms from 45 countries. We document robust evidence that firms whose stocks have a greater potential for extreme illiquidity realizations suffer from higher cost of capital. A one standard...